Anything Once Part 4

"Well," she remarked with satisfaction. "I guess he got more 'n he come for, an' we've seen the last of _him!_"

"But Lou!" There was admiration and awe in his tones. "Your method of fighting isn't in the Queensberry rules, although I must say it was effective. I was going to try to protect you, and it turned out the other way!"

"Don't know what queen you're talkin' about, nor what rules she made, but when _I_ fight, I fight with everything I've got," Lou declared with finality. "Come and let me fix up your head again, an' we'll have supper."

An hour later and throughout the night, a slim little figure, rolled in a man's shabby coat, lay sleeping peacefully in a corner of the mill, while on the doorstep in his shirt sleeves and with a stout cudgel across his knees, a weary man drowsed fitfully, on guard.

CHAPTER III

The Vendor of Everything

When Lou awakened the next morning at dawn it was her turn to find herself deserted, but the fact failed to arouse any misgivings in her mind. She had found in her brief experience with menfolks that they were mostly queer, one way or another, but this one was dependable, and she felt no doubt that he would turn up when he got ready.

Unwrapping her bundle, she took the ap.r.o.n, soap, and broken comb, and wandered down the bank of the stream until in the seclusion beneath the bridge she came upon a pool formed by outjutting rocks, where she performed her limited toilet. Then, scrubbing the greasy ap.r.o.n vigorously, she hung it on a bramble bush behind the mill to dry, and scuttling across the road, made for the woods back of the house where she had committed her nocturnal depredation.

An hour later when Jim came slowly up the hill road from the direction of Hudsondale, he saw a tiny smudge of smoke rising from a rock well hidden in the rank undergrowth at the edge of the stream, and approaching it found Lou industriously brushing her coat with a broom which she had improvised of small twigs tied together. Beside her, carefully cradled in her sunbonnet, were half a dozen new-laid eggs.

"Good morning." He greeted her with a little bow, and sank down on the rock. "Were you frightened to find yourself left all alone?"

"Oh, no. I knew you would come back," she replied serenely. Then, as she noted his glance fall upon the eggs she added in swift self-defense: "You needn't think I stole those; I found them back in the woods a piece. O-oh!"

He had carried a large paper package under his arm, and now as he unwrapped it her wonderment changed to swift rapture. It contained an overall ap.r.o.n of bright pink check, a cheap straw hat, and a remnant of green ribbon.

"I ain't had a pink dress since I was ten!" Her dark eyes were perilously glistening. "I'd almost have died for one, but you had to wear blue after that, 'count of doin' work 'round. Oh, an' that hat! I kin put that ribbon on it as easy as----"

She halted suddenly and lowered her eyelashes, adding:

"But you hadn't any call to buy them for me; I can't pay you back right now."

Jim's reply was irrelevant.

"Why, your eyes aren't black, after all! They're violet-blue, the deepest blue I ever saw!" Then he caught himself up, reddening furiously, and after a moment said in a casual tone: "That's all right about the things, Lou; you can pay me when you get some work to do. Now, go fix yourself up, and we'll have breakfast."

When she had disappeared into the mill he cursed himself for a fool. The child had trusted him as a comrade; what would she think if he began paying her compliments? What had come over him, anyway? He had seen women with violet-blue eyes in more countries than one; beautiful women with every enhancement which breeding and wealth could bestow. It must have been sheer surprise in discovering any attribute of prettiness at all about so uncompromisingly homely a girl as poor little Lou.

With this rea.s.suring reflection he set about replenishing the fire, and presently his companion reappeared. The large, flapping hat sat oddly upon her small head with its tightly drawn-back hair, but the straight lines of the all-enveloping pink gown brought out the slender curves of her childish figure, and she didn't seem quite so gawky, after all, as she moved toward him over the rocks.

"My, you look nice!" he said cheerfully. "I've brought some rolls from----"

"We'll keep them for later," Lou interrupted him firmly. "There's still the end of the bread left, and goodness knows where we'll eat again!"

They breakfasted gaily, drinking the remainder of the milk first and then boiling the eggs in the pan, but Lou's remark about their next meal had made Jim think seriously of the immediate future. He had a.s.sumed a responsibility which he must fulfill, and his progress thus far under the handicaps he had spoken of had been difficult enough alone.

The little pink ap.r.o.n-frock had cost half of his capital, the hat twenty-five cents more, and the ribbon a dime. Five cents in addition for the rolls had left but thirty-five of the preciously h.o.a.rded pennies, and he was ninety miles from home, with a host of petty, but formidable, restrictions barring his way, and an adopted orphan on his hands.

He had been forced to turn his head sharply away when he pa.s.sed the village tobacco store, for every nerve cried out for the solace of a good pipe, but he felt more than repaid for the sacrifice by Lou's honest rapture over the poor things he had been able to get for her.

Breakfast finished, and the remainder of the ham stowed away in the milk-pan, they carefully skirted the house on the rise of the hill, and coming out once more upon the road, they forged ahead. The strained muscles of Jim's back and side were still sore, but they troubled him less than the lack of a smoke, and for Lou it was as though a new world had opened before her eyes.

The pleasant, wheat-growing valley had been left behind them, and the road from being hilly grew steeper and more steep until it became a mere rutted trail over the mountains. More or less dilapidated farm-houses, each with its patch of cleared ground, appeared now and then, and before the gate of one of these a huge, canvas-covered wagon stood, bearing the ambitious legend:

TRAVELING DEPARTMENT STORE

BENJ. PERKINS

A genial-looking fat man in a linen duster and a wide-brimmed hat was just clambering in over the wheel when he spied the two pedestrians gazing at the turnout, and called good-naturedly:

"Want a lift? I'm goin' inter New Hartz."

"Thanks. That is just where we are going, too," Jim replied promptly.

"It's awfully good of you to take us along."

"Git right in; plenty of room with me on the front seat here," the proprietor of the extraordinary department store responded heartily.

"Yer sister 'd be nigh tuckered out ef you tried ter walk her inter town on a hot day like this."

Jim hoisted Lou in over the big wheel and as he climbed up beside her the driver slapped the reins over the broad backs of the two horses, and they were off.

"You are Mr. Perkins?" Jim asked, ignoring the a.s.sumption of Lou's relationship to him.

"That's me!" The other glanced at the fresh bandage about the young man's head which Lou had applied just before they started out, and inquired: "You git hurt, some ways?"

Jim explained briefly, and changed the subject with a haste which would have been significant to a less obtuse host.

"You seem to have a little of everything back here in the van, Mr.

Perkins."

"Reckon I hev," the other agreed complacently. "From a spool of thread to a pitchfork, and from a baby rattle to wax funeral wreaths, there ain't nothin' the folk hereabout hev use for that I don't carry. The big ottermobile order trucks don't hurt my business none; I ben workin' up my trade around here fer twenty year."

Mr. Perkins paused to draw a pipe and tobacco sack from his pocket, and Jim's throat twitched. After filling the pipe the genial pedler offered the sack. "Hev some?"

Jim hesitated, and his face reddened, but at last he shook his head determinedly.

"Thanks; I--I don't smoke."

Lou, who had hunched about in her seat to stare at the a.s.sorted array of articles in the body of the van, turned and looked curiously at him.

Surely that hard bulge in the coat upon which she had slept on the previous night had been the bowl of a pipe! The eyes which Jim had called "violet blue" narrowed for an instant in puzzled wonderment, then blurred as with swift understanding she glanced down at the new pink ap.r.o.n and stroked it softly. But Jim had gone on talking rather nervously.

"You don't get much trade around here, do you? Not many houses in these mountains."

"Oh, here and thar," Mr. Perkins replied easily. "Here and thar."

The conversation which ensued was all Greek to Lou, who took off her hat, leaned her head against the side of the van, and went peacefully to sleep.

She was awakened by a hand gently shaking her shoulder and found that the van had been halted in the middle of a maple-lined street before a big house which bore a sign labeled: "Congress Hotel." Busy little shops shouldered it on either side, and a band-stand stood in the open square.